BURNABY — The Simon Clan women’s basketball team, which honoured just a pair of graduating players on its Seniors Night in late February, is going to be a lot younger team than originally anticipated this coming season.

That adds up to opportunity in the early part of their Clan careers for the three pure B.C. high school freshmen announced as part of the latest recruiting class of head coach Bruce Langford.

Kendal Sands, a point guard from Coquitlam’s Dr. Charles Best Blue Devils; Sierra Schefer, a multi-purpose swing-guard from the Argyle Pipers in North Vancouver; and Juliana Babic, a hard-nosed forward from Holy Cross in Surrey who missed all of 2016-17 to a knee injury, make up the incoming class.

A trio of SFU players with at least a year of remaining eligibility in Elisa Homer, Samantha Beauchamp and Vanessa Gee have all elected not to return for various reasons next season, bringing the Clan’s number of departing players to five.

That quintet, which included starters Kett, Wilson and Homer, played 49 per cent of the team’s minutes, and accounted for 97 of the team’s 170 starting slots over a 26-8 overall campaign.

Also expected to boost the ranks of new Clan players is 6-foot rising redshirt-sophomore forward Nicole Vander Helm, another Holy Cross product who has spent the past two seasons in Div. 1 at Santa Clara.

With Vander Helm’s signing still not official through school channels, Langford was unable to comment on her, owing to NCAA rules.

That’s why Langford is comfortable with seeing how things play out, especially with Babic coming off her knee injury.

“I don’t know where she might end up,” began Langford. “She is not a five (centre), but she can play out of the high post for sure and do some good things, so I think we’ll bring her along slowly. We don’t want to rush her if she’s not ready. We think she has a rebounding piece that is better than anybody’s rebounding piece.”

With Kett’s graduation, the only pure point guard on the Clan roster for this coming season is rising sophomore Tayler Drynan, who showed very well down the stretch of the season.

Using the game’s numerical system of designating positions down to ones as point guards, Langford begins: “We have three kids that can play the five, around four that can play the four, three to four that can play at three and five or six that can play at two. We have one and two halves that can play at one.

“So Kendal could have an opportunity because she is a pure point guard, and she plays at the place where we’re thinnest.”

The core of the team’s backcourt is being built around its youth. Rising sophomores Drynan, Ozi Nwabuko and Tia Tsang all enjoyed promising freshman campaigns with the versatile Nwabuko looking like a potential GNAC Player of the Year over the course of her career. As well, Jessica Jones, a talented combo guard who took a redshirt season, jumps into the mix.

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